The importance of being bilingual

By Gonzalo López Martí – Creative Director

https://www.LopezMartiMiami.com/

 Bilingual people seem to have a lower incidence of Alzheimer’s disease and dementia.

Or so claim them neurologists.

That’s not all: a 15-minute call in Spanish can save you $800 or more on internet services.

It just so happens that a few days back I received a GoDaddy bill that looked abnormally high.

$800 too high.

So I called customer service.

(I had tried to solve it online, to no avail, chatting with some AI bot that literally felt like chatting with a microwave oven).

Anyhoo.

First call: I spoke with a nice female customer service attendant named Sheila.

That I remember.

She reviewed my case and noticed that the charge was less than a month old so I was still within the grace period to obtain a refund.

She was in the process of sorting it out when we got disconnected.

I called again.

After some 8 minutes listening to elevator music a human picked up.

A gentleman whose name I don’t recall.

Sheila was calling me back.

I got disconnected again.

Maybe hurricane Helene messed up the phone lines.

Climate change?

Who knows.

I called again.

I got to speak to yet a different customer service representative.

Male, I don’t remember his name.

He claimed that the refund I was in was trying to obtain was actually not possible because “more than seven days had gone by since the transaction”.

WTF?

Please note that we were talking about an annual prepaid subscription to a series of email & web hosting security, encryption & antihacking features that I had not requested.

Or at least I have no recollection of having done so (I do not deny that I might have checked a box by mistake, which could have possibly triggered the charge)

In any case, this being a prepaid subscription, I still had 11 unused months to go at the time of the call.

Charge me for one month and reimburse me on the remaining 11.

Unfazed, the dude explained to me that I could not get a refund.

But somehow, he had the ability to use these locked funds as credit to subscribe me to other features and services.

Ipso facto he went on a rant to upsell me on upgrades, additional services and what have you.

Was he shamelessly lying to me to my very face to earn a commish?

Who knows.

Unconvinced about the odd turn of events, I politely terminated the conversation.

I said to myself, let’s call again and give it another shot, hopefully a supervisor will sort this out.

Problem is, how can I make sure that I do NOT speak to the same customer service representative?

Bingo, dial 2 for Spanish.

Next thing you know a nice Colombian kid picked up after some 40 seconds of elevator music.

He rapidly took care of everything and voided the transaction that supposedly was cast on stone toward eternity and beyond.

Or so I was told by his English-speaking coworker.

I received the refund notice by email literally 5 seconds later.

Moral of the story #1: learn Spanish and save.

Moral of the story #2: GoDaddy, if you are reading this, kudos to you for having properly trained Spanish-speaking staff.

But.

There’s always a but.

YOU MUST SEPARATE YOUR CUSTOMER SERVICE & TROUBLESHOOTING PEEPS FROM YOUR SALES STAFF. IT IS A BLATANT AND VERY IRRITATING CONFLICT OF INTEREST.

I will remain a GoDaddy client for the time being.

But the moment I sense you guys are playing games again, I WILL TAKE MY BUSINESS ELSEWHERE.

That will be a few thou less on your annual bottom line ¿Comprende?